Currently, consumer research indicates that, faced with a flood of choices in the marketplace, there is a growing trend among consumers to be reluctant to commit to any particular product or service with any degree of long-term loyalty. That trend is evidenced among consumers who, when faced with an excess of payment vehicle choices, elect to use a number of different existing payment vehicles to create their own somewhat intricate patchwork payment system consisting, for example, of various transaction card products, cash, and “white envelopes” to maintain their personal finances and control their spending and budgeting.
Thus, consumers have a tendency to “bucket” their spending by applying for one specific transaction card which they dedicate, for example, to spending for gasoline and the like and another which they use only for buying groceries and the like. Even consumers who use cash have a tendency to separate their cash into “white envelopes”, for example, with their grocery money in one envelope, their entertainment money in another envelope, and so forth.
As noted above, this current trend is by no means limited to payment vehicles and personal finances, and consumers have become increasingly reluctant to commit to practically any products or services. In response to the current trend, companies currently offer no-commitment, risk-free trials of products, such as single music recordings instead of entire CDs, single magazine articles instead of the entire magazine, and small sized portions or quantities of other products, in hopes of upgrading consumers to full-sized products.
There is a present need for a financial product that addresses the current trend of consumers to create their own patchwork personal finance system and that provides a solution that allows consumers to bucket and control their spending, while assuring them of best price/financing and predictable monthly payments, and simultaneously not requiring customers to enter into a long-term commitment/relationship with the service provider.